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Comment by xref | Hacker News Reader

As a former delivery driver I’m curious how shops get shipments of multiple pallets of...everything? Early in the morning are trucks allowed? are the pallets broken down and handtrucked to each shop?

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I've seen this in some cities (Vienna, for example), and the bollards are lowered (either manually or hydraulically) in the early hours of the morning so that deliveries can be made. They go back up around 7am.

I was in Denmark where they had that. Unfortunately, they'd constantly let through "special" vehicles, just enough to pretty much ruin it.

In many smaller Danish towns you _can_ drive on top the shopping streets, but there'll be big signs telling you that it's only allowed for "service/special vehicles".

If you get caught there you'll probably get a nice fine. And you can be sure all the pedestrians will make you drive slow.

Finally, the road usually has tiles so you don't get in there by accident, nor would you want to.

There were plenty of them driving, slowly, and loudly beeping. Enough so it was simply impossible to walk without constantly having to move over for them.

It didn't really work as a pedestrian mall. I've been in other European cities where it did work, i.e. no vehicles.

> There were plenty of them driving, slowly, and loudly beeping. Enough so it was simply impossible to walk without constantly having to move over for them.

Where in Denmark was that? I don't see any loudly beeping delivery cars in Copenhagen.

It was about 10 years ago. I don't remember just where it was.

Pedestrian zones here in Lübeck, Germany: Delivery trucks are allowed between 6 and 8 in the morning.

Either in the morning or, especially for larger stores, they have delivery docks on the other side of the building. Usually, only a single street is closed for cars.

A common design is to interleave pedestrianized representative main roads with parallel utilitarian back alleys that are used almost exclusively for deliveries.

I’m extra curious for things like Madrid’s superblocks that are 9 blocks square!

In Boston there's a pedestrian only area downtown. Commercial vehicles, taxis, and cops are still allowed to drive into the area. They go very slowly.

Perhaps we need more electronic handtruck startups...

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